Atari's Lynx was the world's first handheld color video game console release on 1987 and offered true multi-player competition, built-in fast pseudo-3D and distortion graphic effects, reversible controls, ability of drawing filled polygons with limited CPU intervention and fast arcade gaming action. It was originally conceived by Epyx in 1987 called the "Handy" at that time. Two creators of the system, Dave Needle and R.J. Mical, were also members of the Amiga design team. Atari bought the rights to the Lynx and to Epyx's library of titles, and the rest is history. Epyx no longer has any connection with Atari or the Lynx.On 1990 Atari release the so-called Lynx II which had limited diffs than its predecessor (i.e. stereo sound, better LCD panel's backlighting etc) in order to compete with Nintendo's and Sega new handheld consoles. Lynx's main competitors were Sega's Game Gear (1991), Nintendo's Gameboy (the last being monochrome but later released with color display). Unfortunately Lynx could not compete with the software library of the Game Gear and Gameboy, ALTHOUGH its superior hardware for technicaly way better games (note that Game Gear was a pure 8bit platform of similar architecture with the old 8bit Master System).